From Cecilia Brainard: I am sharing my story, THE VIRGIN'S LAST NIGHT, as part of my Love Stories Series featured in this blog. Earlier stories posted include Nikki Alfar's THE MECHANISM OF MOVING FORWARD and Geronimo Tagatac's A SIMPLE GRACE.
My story, THE VIRGIN'S LAST NIGHT, was inspired by an unmarried aunt whose beau from her youth came around late in their lives, when he was a widower, and she still
unmarried. She had spent most of her life taking care of her younger unmarried sister. In Cebu, they were referred to as the Old Maids living on Mango Avenue. My aunt sent the man
away, ridiculing him (her nieces and nephews assumed) -- Are you out of
your mind? At our age?
One day when I was already writing stories, I remembered my aunt and her old beau, and I wrote the “The Virgin’s Last Night.” The story flowed, with few revisions.
This story first appeared in Going Home to a Landscape: Writings by Filipinas (Calyx Books); it also appeared in Growing Up Filipino II: More Stories for Young Adults (PALH & UST PH. It is part of my short story collection, Vigan and Other Stories (Anvil), and my Selected Short Stories (PALH and UST PH).
***
BIO: Cecilia Manguerra
Brainard is the author and editor of over 22 books. She has written three
novels: When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, Magdalena,
and The Newspaper Widow. Her recent books include her Selected Short Stories and Growing
Up Filipino 3: New Stories for Young Adults. Two books she edited were released
in 2025: How I Became a Writer: Essays by Filipino and Filipino American
Writers, and Step Into Our Kitchens: Theresian Recipes and Tales.
She has forthcoming translations in Greek, Japanese, Portuguese, Macedonian, Arabic, Serbian, Slovenian and Azerbaijan, in addition to earlier translations of her work in Turkish and Finnish.
She received an Outstanding Individual Award from Cebu, a California Arts Council Fellowship, a Brody Arts Fund, several travel grants from the US Embassy, National Book Award, Cirilo Bautista Prize, travel grant from the National Book Development Board, and others.
Cecilia taught at UCLA, USC, California State Summer School for the Arts, and the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension. She served as Executive Board member and Officer of PEN, PAAWWW (Pacific Asian American Women Writers West), Arts & Letters at the Cal State University LA, PAWWA (Philippine American Woman Writers and Artists), among others.
She also runs a small press, PALH or Philippine American Literary House (palhbooks.com). Her official website is https://ceciliabrainard.com.
THE VIRGIN’S LAST NIGHT
Copyright by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard. All rights reserved.
FOUR
MONTHS AFTER PETRA SANTIAGO DIED, and the night before her own death, Meding Santiago
got out of bed, reached for her rosary by the side table and started reciting
the Creed. It was almost midnight, and she was saying the rosary that Thursday
for the second time. Since Petra died, she slept poorly, her mind fixed on the
image of her younger sister on the hospital bed, waving her bony fingers in
front of her face before she finally stopped breathing. Sometimes she would
forget that Petra was gone, and she would pour another cup of hot chocolate or
turn to say something to no one, and she would be surprised at the depth of her
grief.
She was on her knees, with her eyes closed, when
she heard a soft knock on the door. She rose and walked to the door. She opened
it, expecting one of the servants, and was surprised at the figure of an old
man. It took Meding a second before she caught her breath and said, “Mateo,
what are you doing here? You’re dead.”
“Here to see you, Meding. It’s been a long time,”
replied Mateo, standing first on one foot, then shifting his weight to the
other, a man embarrassed.
“Well,” Meding said, clutching her nightdress at
the collar, uncertain about what to do, what to say, uncertain about her sanity
at the moment.
“You’re not crazy,” Mateo went on. “I’m
dead. I know, it’s strange, but that’s
how it is sometimes. I have to get back before sunrise.”
“Oh,” Meding said, accepting this explanation
with some kind of relief. Ever since her sister’s death, life had taken on the
quality of a dream, and Mateo’s presence was just another strange event. She
squinted at the figure by the doorway. “You’ve gotten old, Mateo,” she said,
“and paunchy too.”
“You’re just as beautiful.” Mateo hung his head
the way he used to as a young man, many years ago.
Meding laughed and walked over to the armoire mirror to study her image. “Mateo, you and I know I’m no spring chicken.
Mateo walked timidly to the armoire and leaned
against it. “You’re beautiful to me,” he insisted.
“How’d we get old Mateo? We used to be young,
remember? Now, look at us.” She fingered her long flowing white hair, felt the
rough weaving on the skin of her face. She closed her eyes and traveled back to
the summer when she was twenty and she wore a white voile dress and her brown
arms shone under the hot summer sun. Mateo, tall and lean and looking like a
movie star, had stood behind her. They were at the annual carnival, and had
marveled at the woman with the python son. The snake-son had undulated slowly
around her shoulders and down her arm. The story went that the woman had given
birth to twins, one human, and one snake, but the boy died in infancy, and she
and her snake-son became closer than ever. People at the carnival had shoved
and pushed and Mateo stood behind her, so close, she could feel his warm breath
against her nape.
She sighed and opened her eyes to catch Mateo
studying her intently as he had done so many times in the past. “I love you
more than ever, Meding,” he said, and Meding blushed.
“Don’t be foolish,” she said, in the gruff manner
she had acquired through the years; but for the first time since her sister
died, and perhaps far longer than that, Meding felt her spirit turn light,
airy, like the lace curtain fluttering by the window. She moved so the bedroom
light didn’t fall directly on her face. “Don’t be foolish,” Meding repeated,
feeling the heat spreading over her face and down her throat, thoroughly
embarrassed that she was blushing, and what a silly, girlish thing for an old
woman to do. She walked over to the antique rocking chair by the window and sat
down.
Keeping a respectful distance between them, Mateo
followed. He took a deep breath and looked around. “What’s that sweet smell?”
he asked, in a boyish way, and Meding thought that Mateo really hadn’t changed
that much.
“Jasmine,” she replied, as she rocked slowly,
back and forth.
He peered outside the window. “My goodness, it’s
the same vine that used to be there when we were young,” he said.
“The trellis had to be rebuilt because of wood rot,” said Meding in a practical voice. “All those years, the typhoons, even though the wood was treated it finally fell apart.”
Mateo leaned out the window. In the distance an
enormous full moon hung in the sky, and Meding smiled as she looked at his
silhouette against that backdrop.
“We kissed for the first time under that trellis,”
he murmured, turning to look at her.
She, avoiding his eyes, shook her head and said,
“Don’t bring that up now,” but in her mind they were young and alone in the
garden, and he had bent down and kissed her on her mouth. She had felt as if
she would run out of breath, as if she would faint, and she pulled away. They
looked at each other and again he kissed her, and this time she did not pull
away. She had discovered that by tilting her head slightly to one side she
could breathe, and besides she was so lost in the softness and moistness and
wonder of the kiss, that she could not have pulled away if she had exerted her
entire will. She had even felt—very briefly—the tip of his tongue, and she had
become so heady, she could hardly find her way back to the house.
“I was so mad for you,” Mateo continued. “I loved
you; I wanted you.”
“This is foolish talk, Mateo. Besides if you
loved me so much, why did you marry Carlota? That was a rather disastrous
marriage, wasn’t it? I understand you weren’t married a month when she threw
you out of your matrimonial bedroom.”
“Carlota knew I loved you, and she never forgave
me. Not for the rest of her life.”
“She outlived you, didn’t she? I hear she died
only a few years ago.”
“Yes, she lived to be seventy-nine, and she spent
all those years in bitterness, hating me, you, all of mankind. She told me once
that she could feel your presence with us at all times. On my deathbed, she
begrudged me for loving you.”
“Well, that was very foolish of Carlota. I always
did think she was a foolish woman. Like I said I never understood why you
married a foolish woman like that. And then you had other women, equally
foolish I’m sure. Don’t be surprised that I know. My sister and I may have
lived quietly in this forgotten corner of the world, but believe me, we heard
news about you.”
“What was I supposed to do? I wanted to marry
you; you turned me down. Carlota was there; she distracted me from my pain, at
least for a while. When we got married, she changed and became prickly and
shrill. She became even worse after the fire.”
“What fire?”
“You probably didn’t know, but we had a fire at
home. The boys were almost grown by this time. Do you know what I saved first
from the fire?”
Meding shook her head.
“Your letters and pictures.”
“What letters and pictures?”
“Your old letters and pictures. I never returned
them, remember?”
“You saved those?”
Mateo nodded. “I had kept them locked in my desk.
When the fire broke out, I brought them outside, to safety. When the commotion
died down, Carlota saw those letters and pictures laying on the ground. She
wanted to destroy them, but I wouldn’t let her. It was over from that day
on.” He lifted his shoulders and
shivered.
“Don’t you think that was a bit foolish, Mateo?
Saving those silly letters and photos when you knew there was nothing between
us?”
“I loved you still; I wanted a part of you with
me, always. You should have married me, Meding. We could have been happy.”
“In the first place, you make it sound like it
was my choice not to marry you, Mateo. You know I loved you. It wasn’t my fault
that Papa dropped dead and you knew perfectly well that Petra was ill. I
couldn’t abandon her, could I? She already had this idea that Mama had
abandoned us when we were children. Now what would have happened to poor Petra
if I’d up and married you? Why, she would have been so lonely, and she would
have felt no better than a dishrag. I couldn’t do that to my sister.”
“She could have lived with us.”
“And be a second banana? That poor girl was
already losing her hair and had scabs all over her legs from her eczema; can
you imagine how she would have felt, to have been a glorified servant in our
household?”
“Nobody said she’d be a glorified servant in our
household, Meding. She would have been my sister-in-law. We would have been a
family together. And she would have been the aunt to our children. Our
children, Meding, remember we used to talk about them.”
“You and Carlota had children, didn’t you?”
“Two boys, who took after their mother. When they
got married, they never visited us. They hardly spent time at my wake. One was
late for my funeral.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mateo. Children should
be a source of joy for parents. I know I’ve found great joy in my dealings with
the children at the orphanage. Petra and I spent a lot of time with those
children. Some of them were abandoned at infancy, placed on the turning cradle
at the orphanage. Maybe because we lost our mother when we were young, my
sister and I considered it a calling to make life brighter for those orphans.”
“You would have been a wonderful mother, Meding.
Our six children, Meding. The dreams we had; we had beautiful dreams; and
they’re all gone. If only you had married me. What kind of life did you have,
running the household for your father, then taking care of Petra all her life?
You never had a life of your own.”
She stood up from the rocking chair and began
pacing the floor. “I want you to know, Mateo, that I’ve had a good life. Just because
you did a fine job messing yours up doesn’t mean I wasn’t happy. Petra and I
have done our part serving the church, society, doing the best we can. No one
can ever say this or that about us about me. I’ve been happy, Mateo, on my own,
with Petra, I’ve been happy. Don’t ever think that my life was in any way
lacking because we didn’t get married and I never had children, and that I’ve
wasted my life taking care of my sister, may-she-rest-in-peace. You should have
seen how she suffered, Mateo. If I could have eaten her suffering, I would
have, right there at the hospital. No medicine could dull her pain, my poor
sister.” Meding sat at the edge of her four-poster bed and began weeping.
Mateo sat beside her and put his arm around her.
“Don’t cry, Meding. Nothing pains me more than to see you crying. Don’t cry.”
She did not stop. She could not. There was the
loss of Petra, and here all of a sudden were old matters that rose up inside of
her, old wounds of her soul that opened up once again. “The truth of it, Mateo,
the real truth, is that I was afraid. I loved you so much, too much, and I was
afraid.”
“Of what?” he asked.
“Of being hurt. It seemed to me that love begat
pain. And love is terribly unreliable. Papa loved Mama, and she died. Mama had
Petra and me, and she left us. Then Papa died. You know he died in his
mistress’s bedroom; the shame of it. Love wasn’t real. Pain was, and suffering;
and I was terribly afraid that one day you would stop loving me. Don’t protest,
Mateo, I’ve seen it happen too many times, men falling out of love; and what
would I have done if I had loved you so completely, with my body and soul, and
you had abandoned me? What would have happened to me?”
Mateo pulled her closer to him and hugged her
tight, as if comforting a child. Her tears dampened his shirt, and she felt
this dampness on her cheek the same way she did years ago when she had told him
that they could not get married, that it was all over, that she could never see
him again, that same cool dampness on her face. Mateo pulled back, and she felt
his mouth on hers, soft and moist as Mateo’s kisses had always been. His kiss
grew bolder and she felt herself yielding, as if there would be no turning
back; but then he pulled away.
“What’s wrong, Mateo?” she asked, wondering if
she had done something wrong. She pushed her long hair away from her face.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”
“Come, let’s walk in the garden,” he said. He
stood up and held his hand out to her. “The moon is large. Let’s go to the
trellis.”
“The trellis, of course.” She got up, as if in
dream and she felt lighter and younger as she glided with him down the stairs
and out the verandah to the trellis with the jasmine vine entwined in it, the
star-shaped white flowers casting off their delicious sweet scent. There, they
assumed the pose they had taken in the past, and as if picking up the strand of
that thread, they kissed. She was twenty once again, and Mateo was twenty-two.
His hands stroked her back, his body pressed against hers. She could feel him,
feel him against her, as their mouths explored the other with abandon. Her head
was spinning; her mind was off someplace where she had never been before, some
wonderful world of sensation, of smelling the flowers, of hearing the breeze
rustling the leaves.
The melody of a waltz started in her head, and
she swayed gently against him. He moved with her, and before long, the two of
them were waltzing in the garden under the huge moon. Up and down the walkway
they danced, past the rose garden, past the calla lilies, past the gazebo, then
right by the gardenia bush, Mateo paused. He plucked a flower and handed this
to Meding. She smiled broadly, happily, as she tucked the gardenia in her long,
flowing hair. They sat on a bench and contemplated the moon. She leaned against
him and rested her head against his chest. To her surprise she could hear and
feel his heartbeat.
“Your heart is beating,” she said. “Why is that,
Mateo, when you’re dead?”
He shrugged and stroked her hair.
She continued listening to his heartbeat; and she
thought to herself how warm and comforting it was to be near him like that.
“Mateo, I’m very happy right now. This is the happiest I’ve been for so long.
I’m happy but I’m also sad. I remembered the children, the house that we
planned to build by the sea, our dreams. It’s sad to think that we lost a lot,
even moments like this when I could just listen to your heartbeat, Mateo. So
much, and we can never have them again.”
“I know. Our dreams,” he said, wiping away her
tears.
“I’ve always wanted to lay down beside you and
put my head on your chest and listen to your heart. Just listen to the rhythm
of it. It must be soothing to do that. It must be nice to do that every night.
Did Carlota do that? No, don’t answer, I don’t want to know. I’ve always wanted
to do that. I just had Petra, you know, and there was so much fussing with
hot-water bags and ointments for her before bedtime.”
He said nothing, just continued caressing her
hair, just continued pressing her head against his heart.
From far away, a rooster crowed, then there was
stillness once more. She knew that the night was ending and dawn was almost
there. They were quiet for a while, knowing that he would have to leave at
sunrise. Mateo stood up and extended his hand to her. “Come.”
She looked up, and she did not hesitate. She felt
no fear as she placed her hand in his, and together they walked into the house,
up the stairs, to her bedroom, and they lay on her bed. She rested her head
first on his shoulder, then pressed her ear to where his heart was, and she
could hear the pulsing of his blood, and she could feel her own blood pulsing
through her veins. When his lips touched hers, they both knew that neither
would pull away, knew that this was the only time they had for each other.
READ ALSO:
A Simple Grace by Geronimo Tagatac - Love Stories Series #2
The Mechanism of Moving Forward by Nikki Alfar - Love Stories Series #1
Cecilia Brainard Fiction: The One-Night Stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair
How I Became a Writer Series
Except for photo with credit, photos were grabbed from the Internet.
Tags - Philippine authors, Filipino stories, Filipino writers, Philippine literature, Filipino American writer, Filipino American literature, short story from the Philippines
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